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Help finding a college I will definitely get into..

Because I am an undocumented student, I have to look for schools that might offer some type of financial assistance to me. I am a QuestBridge Finalist and applied to Yale and Princeton. I will be applying to Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Rice, Brown and maybe Chicago or Washinton U (RD).

I applied to University of Maryland because that is my home state and I know I will get in. But I wanted at least one more safe school but I can't find schools that seem to fit the description.

I am a senior and African American, I have a superscore of 2060 (1350 M/W). I am the VP of my NSBE chapter, National Honor Society, French Honor Society. I intern at UMD. I have over 400 hours of community service hours.

I will be Pre-Med. As of right now, I am interested in Biological Sciences. I hope to go to a school with research opportunities.

Replies to: Help finding a college I will definitely get into..

How long have you been living in Maryland? Will you qualify under the Maryland Dream Act? If so, you will pay in-state tuition and fees at the MD community college, and after finishing your Associates degree or 60 credits there you will have in-state tuition and fees at any MD public university. This would be your dead-on safety route.

In the Financial Aid Forum there are several threads on guaranteed merit-based aid. If your GPA is good, your SAT score would qualify you for some of them. Not all are open to international students (which is the category most of those universities would place you in), but some are.

Here's the thread I mentioned earlier. Not all of these scholarships are open to international applicants so you have to check each one separately. Some have early cut-off dates, and the paperwork would need to be in very soon. It may be worth having your guidance counselor contact Coppin State U to check on what they are planning do do now that the Dream Act referendum has passed.

"I applied to University of Maryland because that is my home state and I know I will get in."

Have you considered St. Mary's College of Maryland - the public LAC in the Chesapeake? (No, it's not Catholic - that's just the name of the town it's in.) For a pre-med, the opportunity to have smaller, non-competitive pre-req classes, close faculty relationships, and less competition for research and medical-related volunteering is worth a great deal. The school is slightly more expensive than UMD, but significantly cheaper than most LACs because it's public and you are in-state. The campus itself is very pretty and right on the water. The local town isn't exciting - but it's not the boonies either.

Attending UMD or any other large public school means you will be sitting in massive lecture halls with hundreds of other potential pre-meds in tough 'weeder' classes graded on a curve where the prof doesn't know you. You can still complete the necessary pre-reqs there, and it's cheap, but your public LAC is a much better option if you are serious about being pre-med.

Just FYI, the date to be considered for many merit scholarships at St. Mary's College of Maryland is passed... D2 got a postcard about this. I left it on the counter for a few weeks as a reminder, but she had decided not to apply there (we are not from Maryland), so let the date go by.

I applied to University of Maryland because that is my home state and I know I will get in. But I wanted at least one more safe school but I can't find schools that seem to fit the description.

It's very difficult to have REAL safety schools when you don't have legal status and you need aid.

How much will your parents pay each year? UMaryland will cost about $22k per year for an instate student. Will your parents pay for that? If not, how will those costs get paid. If you don't know, then UMaryland is NOT a safety. A school is not a safety just because you'd be accepted....you must also know that it's affordable.

The state’s Dream Act allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities, if they have attended a Maryland high school for three years and they or their parents can show they filed state income tax returns during that time.

Did you go to a Maryland high school for 3 years? During that time did your parents file state income taxes?

The MD Dream Act only allows for state aid, not fed aid. How much aid is MD state aid? I suspect that it's not much....certainly not enough to cover $22k per year.

Have you considered Towson? I toured it with my son expecting to dislike it and was pleasantly suprised by the facilities, the enthusiasm of the students we met, the wooded grounds, and how many nooks and crannies there were in what should have felt like a large school but didn't.

They do a lot of partnering with Johns Hopkins for health and bio studies. Looks like cost for you in state would be at least slightly cheaper than UMD, and you could probably get a Provosts Scholarship and Honors College $ too. AND they have puppies! (by that I mean that during finals week, they bring puppies onto campus to help the students destress. I kid you not.

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